# Meshtastic v2.8.0.7239fe8 — Meshtastic Firmware 2.8.0.7239fe8 Alpha

- Product: Meshtastic (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/meshtastic)
- Vendor: Meshtastic
- Date: 2026-08-30
- Version: v2.8.0.7239fe8
- Original notes: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/releases/tag/v2.8.0.7239fe8
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/meshtastic/releases/v2.8.0.7239fe8
- Labels: Pre-release

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

---

- **changed** — Node numbers (ID) are now derived from the public-key identity of the node instead of hardware mac address
- **changed** — Long-name reduced to 25 bytes
- **changed** — New US nodes now default to LongTurbo preset instead of LongFast on first-time region selection
- **changed** — Position and telemetry broadcast are now opt-in rather than always-on
- **added** — Packet signing via XEdDSA with BaseUI signing status UI
- **added** — Traffic Management Module for packet forwarding with dedup, rate limiting, and role-aware policing
- **added** — Automatic variable hop limits based on live mesh activity and message-size estimation
- **added** — Mesh beacon feature with admin controls
- **added** — Noise floor tracking with sliding-window estimate
- **added** — New amateur-radio regions: 70cm, 1.25m/125cm, and 2m/~144MHz
- **added** — TinyFast and TinySlow modem presets added to config and menu
- **added** — Color support for TFT-equipped nodes
- **added** — Ham Mode that prompts for new Amateur Radio regions
- **added** — Hex picker UI for entering hex values
- **added** — Offline map tiles with zoom controls in InkHUD
- **added** — Full touch support for the T5 E-Paper S3
- **added** — InkHUD port for the LilyGo T5 E-Paper S3 Pro
- **added** — Optional LED_LORA indicator to show LoRa TX and RX activity
- **changed** — LoRa config changes now apply live without a reboot
- **changed** — GPS time sync: device now sets its clock from GPS every 30 minutes
- **fixed** — Position privacy: direct-send position packets are clamped to channel precision and public/known-key position precision is similarly clamped

##### 🚀 Big changes

> [!WARNING]
> **New US nodes now default to LongTurbo, not LongFast.** Only applies to first-time region selection on the device screen. LongTurbo and LongFast can't hear each other. You will need to switch the preset back to LongFast to join an existing mesh on the prior default. (#11637)

> [!IMPORTANT]
> If you hit a bootloop or repeated crashes after upgrading, we recommend a full erase and flash. Export your config first to backup first, if you have any imporant settings you want to save.

There are a number of fundamental changes to 2.8 that require a heads-up. Please review some of these higher profile changes so that you are aware of them before installing:

- Node numbers (ID) are now derived from the public-key identity of the node instead of hardware mac address
- XEdDSA based packet signing
- Reduction of long-name to 25 bytes
- Precise position no longer allowed on known-keys (public mesh. Please use private channels for this)
- Telemetry and position are off-by-default and must be opted into
- Ground-up redesigned NodeDB storage and traffic management
- Completely new allocation of LoRa Regions and presets, including ham specific carve-outs

##### Other high-impact changes

###### Radio & mesh protocol

- **Packet Signing via XEdDSA** (#10478) plus a **BaseUI signing status UI** (#10841), unsigned-packet policy hardening with test coverage (#10858), and runtime-toggleable `MESHTASTIC_LOCKDOWN` hardening for nRF52 (#10349, opt-in via #10712).
- **Traffic Management Module** for packet forwarding — dedup, rate limiting, role-aware policing (#9358 base, #10706 dedup/rate-limit expansion, #10745 next-hop cache overflow store, #9921 congestion-aware position interval/hop-exhaustion tuning).
- **Automatic variable hop limits** based on live mesh activity and message-size estimation (#10176).
- **Mesh beacon** feature and admin controls (#10618 base implementation, #10839 second pass adding beacon admin/config).
- **Noise floor** tracking with a sliding-window estimate (#9347).
- **Hash table index for O(1) packet history lookups** — improves routing/dedup performance on busy meshes (#9499).
- New amateur-radio regions: 70cm (#10627), 1.25m/125cm (#10638), 2m/~144MHz (#10623); EU regions merge plus Narrow/Lite region enablement for EU (#10675, #10120); LoRa region preset map for cleaner per-region defaults (#10736).
- **TinyFast and TinySlow modem presets** added to config and menu (#10597).
- LoRa config changes now apply live without a reboot (#9962); LoRa settings expansion and validation improvements (#9878).
- Position privacy: direct-send position packets are clamped to channel precision (#10383), and public/known-key position precision is clamped similarly (#10665) and honors explicit channel settings to prevent location leaks (#10513).
- Licensed operators are now prevented from rebroadcasting packets to/from unlicensed users, for regulatory compliance (#9958).
- Packets with missing/invalid `hop_start` (pre-hop firmware) are now deprecated/blocked (#9476).
- Spoof detection added for UDP multicast packets (#9905).
- Low-bandwidth conversion support added to MeshRadio (#10595).
- ATAK Plugin V2 implemented (drops legacy unishox2 compression) (#10105), including TAKTALK voice/text chat message and room data structures.
- Ethernet HTTP/HTTPS API server ported to RP2350 + W5500 boards (#10573), plus Ethernet OTA support for RP2350/W5500 (#10136).
- Optional `LED_LORA` indicator to show LoRa TX activity (#10465), and an LED indicator for LoRa RX (#10674).
- GPS time sync: device now sets its clock from GPS every 30 minutes (#10737); GPS is skipped at startup if the LoRa region is unset, to save battery (#10386); GPS model/baudrate now cached across reboots to skip a full sweep (#10544).
- Config: **position & telemetry broadcast are now opt-in** rather than always-on (#10929).

###### UI / display — BaseUI

*BaseUI is the current default grap

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/releases/tag/v2.8.0.7239fe8]_